March 8th - British Street food and nasturtiums for capers

Dear Nigel,

A little while ago I got a lovely e-mail from Richard Johnson (who writes food columns in 'The Guardian') asking if I would like to do some reviews on Street food in my area for British Street food. The brief was as open and as wide as I want to make it....but I could immediately see a few flaws in the fabric.

Richard's writing was full of glowing testaments about cutting edge creativity and wonderful new eating venues popping up in the city and at festivals, and I could feel a small knot developing in my stomach with every sentence I read. Wonderful this, fantastic that - Amazing! What Richard had failed to appreciate was how difficult a project this was going to be in an area like this. You have to understand that this is a highly traditional area - people vote the way their parents did, (some even appear to still be wearing their clothes), and trying something new that Grandma never made is for some a step too far.

So trying to set up a small business in an area like this is going to be an uphill battle. Added to that the current climate (which can't help anyone), seasonal difficulties - most of the big fairs and events here are held in the Summer, and the problem of trying to trace tiny sites on the Internet, and I could see that I was going to have my work cut out before I even started.

But start I have, and my first visits have been to Farmers markets in Wirksworth and Buxton. And in Buxton I found Maxine.

Maxine has a wonderful  pot-bellied  stove with a quirky chimney, which sits on a little mobile trailer. She visits farmers markets, festivals and weddings, making wonderful freshly prepared home made pizzas and cooking them on the base of her wood-fired clay pizza oven. All the ingredients are locally sourced and the flour for the pizzas comes from nearby Caudwell's mill (which I can testify makes a superb range of flours). Even the wood for the oven comes from local sustainable forests.

 I chose my own mix of Ham, Courgette ribbons and black olives and the pizza was exactly like the simple charred and crispy  pizzas Christopher and I bought from the back of a little bakery in Rome many years ago when we were on an art tour and struggling  to find anywhere to have a cheap supper. Like Maxine, the very kind Italian baker took my ten year old son and I into the back of his bakery and let us watch as he slid the fine dough pizzas onto an iron peel and into the wood-fired oven. We were hot and weary, with barely enough money left for food, and the simple kindness of a stranger probably holds a stronger memory for us both than the Sistine chapel ceiling.

So I wrote my review and e-mailed it off for approval. After a couple of tweaks to the opening paragraph Richard was satisfied.
'Nice!' he wrote,'...what's next on your list?'
'Next on my list is to go to bed and read a book for a change,' I replied. It was almost 10 o'clock. Do you food writers stay up all night?

One of the most heartening things about your writing are the human touches and admissions that make us feel, 'Ah, Nigel..he's just one of us'. Like the Mars bar in bed or Beans on Toast for a quick satisfying supper, we feel alright admitting to the same, away from the food snobs who would deride our simple pleasures. With beans on toast you 'like the sweet commercial sauce and the thick toast, which, just for the record, I always butter'. (Quite right.) Being you, of course, there is always further invention - perhaps with cans of beans in your own sauce,'stirring in bacon, mushrooms or whatever is to hand (chorizo and black pudding are favourite additions).'

This recipe for 'Beans on Toast' (page 107) sits on a lump of sourdough loaf, to which I am completely addicted. It is a straightforward midweek supper using cans of pinto, haricot or butter beans in a sauce made with chopped tomatoes, bacon and onion. The magic ingredient is a teaspoon of treacle. I always think tinned tomatoes need the addition of a tiny bit of sugar to give that taste of sun-ripened tomato. There is an almost bitter unripe taste in most tins of tomatoes. Lucy Boyd ( daughter of Rose Gray) urges us to use tins of whole instead of chopped tomatoes as she thinks they taste less watery as better tomatoes are used.

You are very partial to a jar of capers '(which) are without doubt one of the most used seasonings in my kitchen.' This reminds me of a time when I used to pickle the seeds of nasturtium plants, which have a very similar flavour to that of a caper. Of course you are free to disagree with this. But I used to add them to the tops of home made pizza as piquancy offsetting the anchovies and olives. You are also using capers against fish in your 'Sea bass with rosemary and capers' (page 111). Along with lemon, 'the two have almost magical powers when they appear with fish' - allowing you to use that rather flaccid term 'mouthwatering' - 'that over-used term that I have banned from any piece of writing or programme that bears my name.' Few culinary partnerships, like caper and lemon, have the power to make you salivate. The sea bass is baked under a layer of browned potato slices and a lovely dressing made of rosemary, chilli, sherry vinegar, capers, lemon juice and black pepper.

I will have to visit my fish man on Tuesday, but the Beans on Toast is a good store-cupboard standby for any cold windy day when the stomach needs more a trench than a lining. Thank you for that.

Martha

 

March 2nd - In fine fiddle and a slow cooked shank

Dear Nigel,

Away from the chill night air, against a star-studded sky, the little road winds round into the village of Foolow. After  driving many miles around dark country lanes over the unlit Peak District hillside, I am always gladdened by the sight of two glowing china ducks on a bedroom windowsill of the first cottage leading into the village. Already my feet are starting to warm ( as Archie's heating system seems to have given up the ghost of late) and I think I hear the sound of glasses clinking, people laughing and feel the glow from inside.

I have been playing fiddle here at this pub for over ten years now. The landlady, Marilyn, retired and her son took over. She still turns up to sing. Various musicians have come and gone, new faces and old, but mostly the place remains the same. Other pubs may be quainter, more rustic in their appeal, more chic, more welcoming, but what this pub has is continuity.

 Over in the corner in deep conversation are Wendy and John who take groups potholing in the nearby limestone tunnels. Penny and Barry, who used to run the pub many years ago, come in later when the music is in full flow. (The last time I saw Barry outside the pub he was dressed as Sherlock Holmes and taking some Americans out shooting, narrowly missing shooting my dog.) And quiet Mike the drystone waller, over by the bar in his old checked shirt, who likes to come in for a pint and to listen to the music. He nods at me and smiles and returns to his pint. There seem to be drystone wallers everywhere at the moment repairing walls before lambing is well underway.

All these people somehow eke a living out of this beautiful countryside, dominated by farmers and the tourist industry.

The music is good tonight. Brendan Fergus is in fine form and his guitar, banjo and mandolin ripple effortlessly from his well-worn hands. Instruments are littered everywhere. I am sitting next to a bedside cabinet and, before I have time to contemplate this fact, its owner returns and sits down on it. Apparently the bedside cabinet is some kind of drum which the man, a stranger to me, has made himself. It sounds good for all that, and he plays along for an hour or so and then disappears into the night along with the bedside cabinet, without a word. There are a couple staying in the village sitting supping by the wall. He is an Irishman from Leeds and keen to get his hands on Brendan's cherished customised guitar with its mother-of-pearl inlaid initials. We play a few Irish numbers, him and me, and he tells me he is from Ballyclare.

But the best of the evening comes long after the witching hour when the bar is closed and only the hardcore locals remain. Then, after the last strains of a slide guitar disappear into the night, a few ballads. My fiddle and I have been together for many years now. Originally a lovely old English baroque violin, seeing me through my childhood exams, it now masquerades as a boxwood fiddle. It has a fine tone. And, in the wee hours, it has a chance to sing, of famine and loved ones gone to America. And there is total silence here  in the pub. The conversation peters out and all is still. I treasure the moment. They say entrainment is the power to hold people in the palm of your hand. Now that truly is a power worth having.

You are making 'Lamb shanks with black-eyed beans' (pg 103) in a cast iron casserole. It is rather heartening to find that your casseroles are rather like mine ie. 'scarred from bean-based recipes forgotten in the oven..chickpeas leave bubble wrap-type rings on the base; cannellini the sort of snow you get on an untuned television screen.' Thought I was the only forgetful cook with a set of less-than pristine Le Creuseut.

Lamb shanks have become a bit trendy of late, on the menu of every gastropub around, so not quite the cheap cut of meat they used to be. That said, they are delicious,  particularly because they are the hard-working cut from the top of the front leg, and as such have a wonderful deep flavour. But the cooking is everything and getting it right is a bit hit-and-miss. Better to have plenty of time to give the meat as long as it needs to fall off the bone than to try and hurry it to get it on the table. As you point out, 'with the lamb shank we must enter a different mindset, one where something is done when it feels like it, not when a recipe says it should be.'

Everything is done to add depth to this recipe. The lamb shanks are lightly browned, a thick oniony sauce made in their cooking fat, and the meat slowly cooked in the beans and oniony sauce until it 'can be persuaded to part company from its bones.' There is always something very satisfying for the cook about this point. Of course, if you are lucky to have a bottom oven in an Aga, you are probably well-versed in the making of this already.

Here is something new to me - the passion fruit. I know it well and love it, particularly wrapped in a meringue roulade, but I had no idea that I was probably using the fruit before it is properly ripe. Indeed, I don't think I have ever given it much thought at all. The fault lies with never having known what a ripe fruit is. You say that  ' the dark, spherical fruit is most usually sold unripe..smooth, a dull purple mauve..in packs of four from the supermarket.' This is the way I have experienced it, never knowing what it is like to pluck one from a tree in some faraway climate. You say to 'keep them till the skin has thinned and its surface is covered with dimples, like a golf ball. Like us, the passion fruit is better for a few wrinkles.' (Bless you, Nigel. )

'Eaten too early, the passion fruit has an astringency that will remind you of the pomegranate'...(think I have known that taste), 'kept till ripe, it will give you intense fruit flavours and bright, clean, fresh-tasting juice and seeds.' I will take note of this and let my passion fruit breathe for a while next time. It is good to learn new things and to tighten up your knowledge.

The recipe is for 'Passion fruit creams' (page 106), each one an individual in its own little espresso cup - a lovely finish for a dinner with friends when anything heavier is just a little too much. 'Just before you serve the creams, spoon a little puddle of the passion fruit juice over the top. As each diner digs in with their teaspoon, the juice will trickle down into the depths of the cream.' Perfect.

Martha

February 26th - Lambchop's getaway and Say it with cake

Dear Nigel,

A friend's brother has died and I just can't find the right words to say to him. Empathise, yes, - I lost my own brother four years ago and the pain still cuts at times. But what words can you use unless you've known the deceased personally? The only thing I can think of is to make cake. A hastily bought card seems cheap and insincere somehow . Maybe this is why we bake. Here is where we blend in our goodwill and wishes, sprinkle with tears and smiles - all part of the ingredients. The cake will have to be dense and moist - no airy fairy cake - sustaining and wholesome, perhaps a banana and pecan cake or a malt bread tea loaf.

In the end I opt for a  Banana and date loaf from the wonderful Lucy Young ( Mary Berry's sidekick, who deserves to be far better known). I steer clear of iced cakes for this is not a celebration cake.

There is deep fog in the Dale today as I drive through in Archie ( - sounds like a line from Postman Pat). This grim weather has put us all in a baking mood. I pick up the ingredients for the biscuits the children and I are making after school. We are baking Raspberry and chocolate fork biscuits from a lovely new book by Miranda Gore Browne ( a Great British Bake Off finalist) called simply 'Biscuit'. I have heard glowing endorsements about this book from friends, and I am always on the look out for new ideas and a twist on old favourites. This book seems to have a comprehensive selection of both. I am particularly interested in her 'Rhubarb crumble biscuits' (with raw young rhubarb and orange zest added directly into the biscuit dough),- and very seasonal at the moment; and the 'Langues de chat with milk chocolate ganache', as I'm a sucker for a fine, rich ganache filling.

Had an interesting cartoon moment as I walked through the village to pick the children up from the Honker bus. A small flock of sheep had escaped from somewhere and were wandering down the lane - six white straggly things and a small brown one trying to keep up. They were wandering into the pretty cottage gardens and grazing on all things green. Not much interest in the gardens at present apart from little clumps of green and white snowdrops bent over like mint imperials stuck on spears of angelica. Coming back again with the children we are greeted by the comic sight of three good-looking butchers in striped aprons all waving their arms around and chasing the sheep up and down the pathways. They weren't actually waving meat cleavers about - but might as well have been. Don't know if the sheep were escapees from the butchery, but today is Tuesday and killing is only done on a Monday. That's when the local farmers all come through with their small livestock trailers loaded up with the week's offerings. It was a scene reminiscent of a Helen Oxenbury Nursery Rhyme book.

You and I have a little catching up to do, and I start with your baking foray a week ago. As you plainly point out: 'I suspect the world doesn't need another cupcake recipe',and so you are setting about making 'something with a little more heart and soul.' I think we are definitely singing from the same hymn sheet, or whatever, here. The cakes you are making are 'little apricot and oat cakes (page 75) - cakes with 'backbone...(and) an interesting texture, which comes from rolled oats and dried apricots. It's as near as I can get to giving you a cupcake recipe.' (Now why doesn't that surprise me!) By page 79 these cakes have morphed into 'An apricot crumble cake'. I love the way recipes twist and change and pop-up again in a different form elsewhere. It makes them seem more real. They leap out of the page at you and onto your imaginary plate. There is no suggestion anywhere that this or that has been tried and tested many times over and amended  in a large impersonal cookery school. The recipes come out of the food and inclination. Much like home.

You are squeezing lemons for a lemon tart. As you say, a lemon at room temperature yields more juice than a refrigerated one. I agree. I often warm mine for a few seconds in the microwave and this has really good results too. Like you, I appreciate the tactile qualities and shape of my traditional wooden lemon reamer. Fishing out the pips never bothers me either. I note that you have added the zest and juice of a small blood orange to your traditional tarte au citron recipe and wonder what kind of frisson this is going to make - a kind of St.Clements? almost. As this is one of my favourite puddings (or do I really have to call it a desert?), I  will go looking for blood oranges when I'm next out. They should still be around at the moment, I think.

Now, here's an answer to an age old complaint of mine: why pastry shrinks in the tin. I always thought it was me stretching it too far and rolling too thinly, but according to you it is the amount of water you add to the pastry that does it. 'The less water you add, the better - too much will cause your pastry case to shrink as it bakes.'

I think we are probably introverts, you and I. We like our own space, the sound of silence echoing. You love 'the sound of snow falling in a forest'. I love the half hour before the dawn, the sigh after a storm and the next five minutes after someone's turned the tele off.

You make quiet food. Pared back, gentle, calming food. Food to contemplate, that won't shout for attention. Tonight it is 'Bulgur and bacon'- a pilaf of 'homely grains and juicy nuggets of mushroom'. It is the kind of simple dish that appeals to me for supper.

Martha

February 19th - Leaving Nigel and a little Scotch mist

Dear Nigel,

I'm flying off to Aberdeen today and there's been a bit of a problem. The problem is you, my dear. You've put on a bit of weight of late - 2 kilos to be exact - and so I think I'm going to have to leave you behind, sitting on my blanket chest, staring out like a forlorn Heathcliff. It's a choice between you and a pile of knickers, and I'm afraid the knickers won.

So we are to be parted for four whole days. Will my culinary universe cope without your gentle prompting? I expect so. The best part about going away is relinquishing control of the chopping board and eating something lovingly made just for you for a change. No menu, no choice - and as long as it's not carrots everything will be fine.

We had this conversation, did we not, earlier this week - you with your aversion to eggs and me to carrots. Amazing that one simple ingredient could cause such a physical reaction, even after all these years, because of childhood compulsion. No child should be forced to eat something they really don't like, however tiresome this may seem to a parent dealing with such a fussy eater.

Sitting in a cafe in Departures, in alien territory, I am people watching. As Richard Curtis noted in 'Love Actually', there really is the full spectrum of emotion played out at airport gates. Maybe not the huge outward display pictured in the montage to the film, but traced on the faces of countless passers-by,  the trickle of emotion withheld. There is greater variety, a firmer purpose, and the trail of lives lived on different paths all crossing in one place.

I could comment on the quality of the food - bland - but what's the point, I'm only here for the coffee. And it is good. The caffeine hits the right spot and I revive. I note that the lemsip tablets I've been taking contain 50mg of caffeine in each two capsule dose - great, unless you're trying to relieve a blocked nose and headache so that you can get a good night's sleep.

Joy oh joy, I arrive exhausted to find you've beaten me to it. I turn to the bookshelf and there, staring me in the face, is a pristine copy of 'Tender - volume 2' by Nigel Slater. Minus its brooding Heathcliff it is, nevertheless, you in all your unbridled glory.

I am reading up about Rhubarb in 'Tender'. My first revelation is that there are different varieties for early, mid and late season. Why this has never occurred to me in regard to Rhubarb I have no idea since it is so obvious in other fruits like Raspberries. The variety I planted was the fairly bog-standard nursery variety of Timperly Early - 'a thin-stemmed heavy-cropping variety..(which) you can pick until early Summer'. Perhaps this may warrant another trench of Valentine (with its heart-shaped leaf, exceptionally sweet and prolific), or Victoria (a lovely old variety with thick maroon stems and red and green flesh); varieties which crop from June onwards. My mum loves to marry stewed Rhubarb with Raspberries, so a later variety would be good.

One of the best ideas I've heard in a while is your idea for the huge amount of superfluous juice that comes from the stalks as they cook. Now I'm one of those slutty cooks who take 'cooks privilege' and stands at the cooker with bowl and spoon removing and devouring all that wonderful sharp and sweetened juice that would "simply ruin that lovely pie" you're making. Your great idea is to pour it into glasses with jagged ice cubes - you, using up your latent aggression basic-instinct style to smash up the ice cubes with an ice pick (always knew you had it in you somewhere, Nigel!) and top it up with sparkling mineral water. My own Rhubarb needs a few weeks yet to start really cropping, but this is one drink I'm sure to be making. I hate to see any kind of waste.

I have never tried using Rhubarb with fish, although I have seen countless recipes suggesting it. But the photo of Mackerel with Rhubarb and sherry vinegar (page 1131) looks very striking indeed. You say that the rhubarb 'brings out the inherent sweetness of (the) mackerel'. Leaving the Rhubarb whole, rather than as  a puree, in all its fuchsine vibrancy 'alongside the shimmering silver of the mackerel, makes for a beautiful and extraordinary supper.' Strange how we so often shy away from things we have never tried, preferring to stay with the tried-and-tested when there is so much out there waiting to be discovered if we did but venture out occasionally. So, with the lure of a painterly food portrait I will get some mackerel in. The use of capers is optional, but I think they may be the very thing to sting the taste buds, and, after the blandness of a cold, this is what I'm searching for.

Martha

February 16th - Student kitchens and pink Champagne

Dear Nigel,

I could have done with your help in the kitchen this afternoon - not the usual culinary expertise, more another pair of hands with a tea towel whilst I set to with the washing up. I do own a dishwasher but it's tucked away in a shed  - long story. Anyway, the upshot of it is I get home from a very long drive to Aberdeen and back to be greeted by something resembling the Manhattan skyline.

 Too tired to be angry I am intrigued by the sculptural dexterity with which Will and Tom have managed to balance almost every pan and piece of crockery I own in quite a small area. There are skyscrapers consisting of two mugs and three glasses in each, all balanced on top of each other, and stacks of pans showing off the remains of their contents. I use my forensic skills to try to work out when, or if, there might have been any washing up last done...I could have sworn I'd left the kitchen 'fairly' spotless last Friday. Tuesday's crepe pans seem to be here, and, judging by the number of plastic milk containers (and surely four pints a day is adequate) that pushes it back to about Sunday. Not quite a week then. A weeks' bill for the cattery is starting to look like a bargain in comparison.

 Am I alone in experiencing this kind of student kitchen in my own home every time I go away? Tom isn't even off to Uni yet, unlike the older four,and still he seems to be getting in training. He's grown the long curls and developed that lolloping gait that involves the head visibly rising and falling as I run along beside to try and keep up. Sentences involve few words uttered in a single tone, and apparently everything in life (such as picking up a cup of tea) involves a huge amount of effort on his part. The student kitchen seems to be part of the tradition too. And where does it come from? I don't believe any of these nice, well-fed kids ever came from homes with wall-to-wall salmonella and homemade rat-trails.

The morning sun takes me out into the garden and I am heartened to see the first flush of pink champagne rhubarb with its crinkled leaves of lime and acid yellow, more like the inside of a tightly-balled lettuce at present. I take my well-travelled old terracotta forcer and plonk it over one of the crowns. I am excited. This is the time of year I like best, rediscovering things once again. The crowns were new last year, a house-warming present to myself, and I had to stop myself from snapping off the sticks for cooking. The first year it is always wise to leave the rhubarb intact and let it die back into itself and store its goodness for the future. It will make stronger, better plants this year and be worth the wait. Soon I will be able to give Sophie and Molly, the way my Granny did me, a stick of champagne rhubarb each  and a pot of sugar to dip it in. Uncooked, sharp, indigestible... Wonderful!

You are making little prune puddings with caramel sauce (pg 69) as 'nothing makes (your) heart sink like a restaurant order of one pudding and four spoons'. I'm with you here; there's something very satisfying about finishing every scrape of your own little pudding, deciding whether to dive into the succulent middle, with its Agen prunes soaked in sherry, or to carve off the outside and baste in the brown sugar and cream sauce while the scalding fruit cools.

I'm not cooking today. I'm nursing a full-blown cold and refusing to cook. I had one of those judge-me-if-you-dare moments at the checkout, feeling as i was, like s***: My yummy friend Caroline was in front of me with her trolley of out-of-season asparagus, blueberries and smoked salmon; and me with every cold comfort food known to man (or more likely woman) in mine - Green and Blacks chocolate, extra-thick yogurt with fudge sauce, Heston's Earl Grey hot cross buns...in fact, nothing remotely healthy at all. Mostly eaten in bed and washed down with plenty of Blackcurrant lemsip, with as many synthetic additives as they care to add to it and to my anaesthetised taste buds.

Your dinner is Chicken with potatoes and dill. It looks like a good mid-week alternative: a basic chicken and mushrooms in cider, you cut down the work by adding the potatoes to the cider mixture to cook. The cream and dill are added right at the end to the reduced sauce. I have tended to reserve dill for eating with fish so I'd like to give this one a go. On another day.

Martha

February 12th - Pancake Tuesday and fried fish and bacon

Dear Nigel,

I'm away from home for a few days at my mum's and have just eavesdropped on one of the most pleasing phone calls ever.

I  left two hefty teenagers with a freezer full of ready meals (as requested, and against all my own principles) that required the most minimum of intervention on their part. After all, hand to mouth is about as far as it goes at that age, and words are fairly monosyllabic at the best of times.

 But today is different. Today is pancake Tuesday and, for the first time in their entire lives, they are about to miss out on a certain unwavering tradition and ritual. And it is all too much to bear. So Tom is on the phone to my mother wanting instructions for knocking up a few pancakes. (Of course, he could look in one of my hundreds of cookery books, but it's rather nice that his first source of advice is Grandma. After all, this source of advice is completely reliable, unlike his mother's, it seems.)

Today you are making a wonderful dish of smoked haddock with potato and bacon (page 66). As you put it, 'the perfect marriage of smoked fish and cream.' I happen to love smoked fish but smoked haddock has a habit of repeating on me for ever more, so I'm particularly interested in a recipe such as this where 'cream and smoke produce a calm and gentle partnership, working in dish after dish.' The result is a more refined version of the haddock poached in milk that I am used to. I like the way the taste is layered up, layer upon layer, with the gently fried bacon and potato chips and then the haddock and infused cream sauce. Strong flavours, each one balancing and setting off the others.

 There are excellent smoke houses here on the coast in Northumberland, at Craster and Sea Houses, which I never fail to make a point of visiting on any trip up here. My Grandpa was a fishmonger here and the smell of Granny's fried fish and bacon is an amalgamation of scents that has travelled with me throughout life - no one fried a fish like my Granny with her black iron frying pan in her little 1930's outhouse - the mangle still in the corner, the pull down lid of the larder cupboard (with it's punctured zinc panels) covered in flour, and the little cream curved fridge with its chunky heavy door...a living history in action,never modernised, never changed for all her married life.

You have been to the butcher's and come away with some neck of lamb. You love the fact that you 'can make a fragrant, even luxurious supper out of something some people boil up for the dog'. This is where your butcher wins hands down, with the cheaper cuts of meat which need slow-cooking. You find the big supermarkets 'shunning this richly flavoured cut in favour of the neck fillet at over 12 quid a kilo.'

The recipe you make is for 'Braised neck of lamb with apricots and cinnamon' (page 62) - a great combination for these dank dark times. Your preferred starch of the moment is the fat, pearl-like mograbia (like large couscous), which is better boiled than steamed. This is one to look out for and possibly becoming a little more wider known and available these days. I have cooked with it in the past but it is always good to have your memory jogged again to consider using something on a more regular basis. I remember it being more substantial and certainly more  glossy and satisfying to look at on the plate. So I'll add it to my list this week along with the middle neck of lamb, or small shanks if this is hard to get hold of. The tang of the apricots cuts the fat in this dish like cooking apples work well with pork. There is a rich spicy mix with cumin, coriander seed, chili, garlic, ginger, lemon zest and cinnamon; and fresh mint and lemon zest to serve. This will banish the grey days of February and call to us of Moorish things.

Martha

February 8th - Edible perfume and greens from America

Dear Nigel,

I was doing a cleaning meditation - at least that's what I was trying to convince myself, dusting all the little bottles I choose to clutter my room with. I picked up one to remind myself of a wonderful day out last spring and caught something I hadn't recognised before. If food is the reason you live and breathe (OK one of them), then it stands to reason that you would want to surround yourself with it all day long. Your marmalade-scented house is another version of someone else's Grapefruit candle.

The perfume in question was Rhubarb. The next, Earl Grey and cucumber, the next Ginger and nutmeg. And there was coffee, and chocolate and Lime,basil and mandarin. Seems if you can't eat it then you naturally want to wear it.

I collect my friend Jill's linocut prints, so I was interested to see that Alice Waters the founder of Chez Panisse  in Berkeley, California uses them for the cover and throughout  her beautifully illustrated book ' Chez Panisse Vegetables'. Alice set up Chez Panisse over 30 years ago to share her love for honest simple cooking using organic  produce. Chez Panisse Vegetables, and the subsequent Chez Panisse Fruit, are her effort to share her recipes with us all. It's always good to see a different take on ideas from other cultures.

The first recipe I spot is one for wilted Amaranth greens. Now this is not a vegetable I have ever come across  but according to Alice 'the weed amaranths are very common, sprouting up in the cracks of sidewalks and in vacant lots, and taste much like their domesticated cousins.' The leaves are used in much the same way as other cooking greens. Alice says,'we make salads of small red amaranth leaves to accompany seared tuna and salmon tartare, and cook the larger leaves both alone and combined with other greens to serve in pasta dishes.' I wonder if some of these weed amaranths would grow in our milder west country climate. The variegated variety shown in the linocut plate has a very pretty leaf.

So this will be a cookery book to look after and treasure, unlike some of my old-and-abused Nigel Slater cookery books; dog-eared, stained, with folded corners, writing and scribbles. There is even one that seeks to pre-empt this kind of abuse by providing a vivid custard-coloured rubbery vinyl cover. This book is 'Thirst'. And, while at first glance one might imagine it to be a cocktail book for reading in the bath, or to aid the extremely pissed cook, it is actually a beautifully printed and photographed collection of healthy juices and smoothies. Wonderful combinations like Mango, Raspberry and Lime, and Grapefruit and passion fruit, which I would not think to put together myself. Obviously I go and look for the most unhealthy smoothie I can find and here it is, lurking in the back of the book: Strawberry Milk Shake. You say,'there is nothing remotely healthy about this. But then I see nothing wrong with organic ice-cream, full cream milk and fresh strawberries from time to time'. I console myself with the fact that all that calcium is good for young growing bones, and if i make a little too much for two small tots then...someone has to drink it up.

Martha